Longines Heritage Skin Diver Watch Hands-On

Vintage looks with none of the drawbacks associated with old watches; that’s one of the factors that makes vintage-inspired watches so attractive to watch enthusiasts. And judging from what we saw at Baselworld this year, this trend seems to show little sign of slowing down. Of all the new vintage-inspired watches announced at Baselworld 2018, one of the most exciting and prettiest comes from Longines. This is your hands-on report of the new Longines Heritage Skin Diver.

All images by Ariel Adams

The Swatch Group has identified Longines to be the brand to spearhead the group’s efforts in the mainstream/affordable segment of the watch market. And to do so, Longines has embraced the trend of vintage-inspired watches. This makes sense since Longines is one of the oldest watch companies and has a rich history on which to draw inspiration from. So which watch from Longines’ history did the Heritage Skin Diver get its inspiration from? It is in fact based on the Nautilus 6921 from the late ’50s.

Though the Heritage Skin Diver is based on the Nautilus 6921, Longines has updated its dimensions to give it a more contemporary look. The case is still made out of stainless steel but its diameter has been upsized from the 40mm of the original to 42mm. The larger case size coupled with the long straight and angled lugs means this watch wears large. Personally, I would have preferred if Longines kept the size at 40mm. After all, it is not as if the original Nautilus 6921 was 34mm or 36mm. That would probably be far too small for modern tastes.

Another distinct feature of the Longines Heritage Skin Diver is the large crown. It stays faithful to the Nautilus 6921 by eschewing crown protectors. It is an interesting look, but the size of the crown means that it can be quite easy to snag it against something. The crown screws down, of course, and water resistance is a very adequate 300m. The Heritage Skin Diver comes with three strap choices: a brown leather strap, a stainless steel mesh bracelet, or a black rubber strap.

Like the original, the Heritage Skin Diver has a prominent black dive bezel, but the modern version is made out of black PVD steel. The vintage Nautilus 6921’s bezel was made out of delicate bakelite. The markings on the bezel are done in a faux patina color and the faux patina coloration extends to the dial as well. The hour and minute markers, as well as the hour and minute hands, are all done in faux patina-colored lume, and it provides a nice contrast to the black textured dial. Longines calls this Super-LumiNova ‘Old Radium.’ The Longines logo at 12 o’clock, as well as the ‘Automatic’ wording at 6 o’clock, are also painted in matching faux patina colors. There’s no date window, which is refreshing for a modern watch and also fitting since the Nautilus 6921 also did not have a date window.

Accentuating the aged look of the dial is the watch’s heavily domed sapphire crystal, which recalls the look of acrylic crystals found on vintage watches. It’s a masterful touch that completes the look of the watch. More importantly, it creates some distortion depending on the angle which makes the dial all the more fascinating to look at.

The movement is concealed behind a stainless steel screw down caseback that has an engraving of a diver with a spear. But rest assured that it’s a competent one. Specifically, it is the Longines Caliber L888, which is a fairly heavily modified version of the ETA 2892. Its beat rate has been adjusted from 28,800bph to 25,200bph, which consequently gives it a longer power reserve of 65 hours – a significant increase over the standard ETA 2892’s 42-hour power reserve.

My only gripe about the watch is its size. Keeping it at 40mm would definitely have been much preferred. As it is, I find the case a tad too large and the lugs far too long. Nevertheless, I still find this watch extremely attractive. Longines has got the tone of the faux patina lume and markings just right, and its refreshing to see a dial that’s so clean and well proportioned. The cherry on the cake has got to be its price. The Longines Heritage Skin Diver is priced at just $2,600 regardless of your choice of strap, which, in my opinion, makes it a real bargain. longines.com

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Comments

I used to be a fan, but all of their recent creations are just mall rubbish.

babola

And the award for the worst fake-vintage lume applied on any new production watch goes to…

IG

To whom?

IanE

Maybe I’m mean (probably not my worst fault), but that seems a bit on the pricey side; and why not make the second hand a couple of mms longer?

Al Snow (with ‘Head’)

IanE = The Blue Meanie.

IanE

Ah, fame (or notoriety!) at last.

Al Snow (with ‘Head’)

What does everybody want? Fame!
What does everybody need? Fame!

DanW94

Fame, makes a man take things over
Fame, lets him loose on ABTW
Fame puts you there where things are hollow
Fame, fame, fame, fame…

Chad Hangin

Some get berndt out by fame.

Mikita

…4, 3, 2, 1.. and now I’m officially tired from the fauxtina lume.

“diameter has been upsized from the 40mm of the original to 42mm. The larger case size coupled with the long straight and angled lugs means this watch wears large”
Silly move: lugs are surf-board long, so it will look ridiculous on any wrist below 8″. $2600 is a lot for a simple diver.

IG

You should appreciate faux patina lume more. It’s even weak like real aged radium/tritium because of the dark pigments! Talk about historic accuracy!

Mikita

So it must fall down quickly? Just to match the historical models.

Al Snow (with ‘Head’)

Feeling Feisty?

Dobrin Tomov

why no lume shot?

spiceballs

Generally like Longines but not this – at all.

Neil C

After finding out that longines put their name to the cruel sport of endurance horse racing in the arab emirates I feel I will never buy one of their watches. Hundreds of horses are forced to run 100 miles in one day causing many to die of exhaustion and leg fractures. Longines times the event and gives the winner one of their watches. Under cover footage shows the horses being flogged and beaten to cross the line and evidence of numbing agents being injected into their legs so they keep running with stress fractures until their legs catastrophically break. But at the end of the day longines is there to make money. Who cares about the horses?!

I have no problem with horse killing due to the fact, that we eat a lot of them here. But they shouldn’t be tortured.

William Carlos Willing

Let’s eat all the wild horse animals, the tame animals, the small crawling animals!

Sheez Gagoo

In fact, selling eatable insects became legal last year. You can order a grasshopper burger here. And horses taste great. I realized that this is controversal recently. But I grew up with horse meat and I don’t want to stop eating it.

Basically all of continental Europe, most of Asia as well as Canada, Mexico and parts of South America eats and/or produces horse meat. IMO it’s not a bigger deal than eating a cow or a pig provided that the animal is treated humanely. Riding horses though is unfit for human consumption due to the large amounts of hormones and medication that they’re might have been given. I get that horses are concidered pets or a part of the national identity in Britain and the US.

Raymond Wilkie

It’s unthinkable here.

DanW94

How do those sheep taste?

Raymond Wilkie

Lovely, medium rare with a nice mint sauce and roast potatoes done in duck fat with a side of french beans.

Horsemeat is very tasty and healthy. A lot of proteins and low fat. And not as ugly as insects. I’ll not defend myself because I’m a regular horseeater.

Sheez Gagoo

You have to consider the fact, that horses serve no more purpose since they have been replaced by cars and tractors. but they work well as steaks.

Raymond Wilkie

You monster!

Sheez Gagoo

Come on, you were a cook. I cannot imagine that you never prepared some horse.

Raymond Wilkie

A while back we had a horse meat scare where it was found that some low cost microwave meals ( mainly lasagne ) was found to have horse meat in them. The nation heaved.

Sheez Gagoo

I remember that. Happened in Germany as well. Well, it’s a crime to sell cheap horse as expensive beef but a good horse steak is excellent. I grew up with it and it’s unthinkable for me to stop eating horse. Eating horses is not a crime.

Ah, Mr. Ed, the funniest horse from a time where I was still liquid. I promess to the world, I`ll never eat a horse that`s able to talk or sing like in the following example:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdDZqkDMCv8

From this year it’s not allowed in Switzerland to boil lobsters alive. The must be electrocuted first. So they have a weird kind of electric bath.

Chad Hangin

Electric Funeral!

Raymond Wilkie

Just read up on it and now i feel sick. Absolutely awful.

Klb

Thank you for bringing this up. Difficult to understand how anyone wants to be linked to a ‘sports’ like this. Terrible ( like this watch )

Chaz

Camel Jockeys ought to stick to camels…

Sheez Gagoo

Didn’t know about that. By all despite to Hayek I think he would stop this as soon as he knows about that. SG stopped collaboration with leather manufacturers as soon as they learned how the lizards were killed and they stopped delivering quartz-IC’s to the US-army when they realized, that they use it for cruise missiles.

As someone who likes (and owns) the fauxtina Seamaster 300 and also likes it on the new blue Sinn 103… I will also state that the fauxtina on this watch looks terrible. Too dark, too overwhelming. In other watches I find the use of the fauxtina nice when it adds something to the color palette or helps define visual elements on the dial more clearly. In this watch it does neither. And what was wrong with the 40mm that it needed to be upsized? I can see 35mm watches being upsized to 38mm, or even 37mm watches upsized to 40mm… But this is like taking a right-sized watch and bloating it for no reason. And somehow still getting applause from the critics? Longines heritage has jumped the shark.

chesirecat77

I like the dial texture, dial layout, hands, and brushed tops of the lugs! I look forward to trying the rubber stram on my LLD.
And it’s even for the no-date snobs! 🙂

In my opinion it could have been a really great watch a nice competitor to Oris 65:
1. If they didn’t upsize it. Or at least if they redesigned the lugs to be shorter, up to 50 mm max, preferably less.
2. If they left the bezel markings in plain white. I don’t mind the coloring of lume that much, although it could be a little lighter – the 5 minute marks stand apart from the white minute marks nicely. But there is no reason to “age” the print on the bezel.

Jon Heinz

While it’s not for me personally, I think it’s very tastefully done. Nothing but the size really screams out as a negative, unless you ain’t into aged-look lume.

PR

The size along with the large crown and long lugs kills off what is otherwise a must buy watch. The patina look goes a tad too far as well but it’s tough to tell just b pics

Damn Longines, at least you could’ve gone the Rado Captain cook route and had a limited edition that was perfect and kept the production version larger for the masses

Raymond Wilkie

Super boring™

Phil

Without the faux patina, this would be a lovely piece.

wickets

Minute hand is wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy too short

BNABOD

some seriously long legs and not in a good way

Playboy Johnny

Looks old & dirty out of the box. Lugs are just ridiculous.
Longines/Swatch group: Being associated with cruelty to animals is BAD.
Thanks to Neil C for the information.
BIG PASS.

Hands90

Why are the hands so tiny?

DanW94

Why are your hands so large?

wolverbilly

A dive watch for people that don’t dive, that’s also faking being vintage. What’s worse: the company that makes it or the dinks that buy it? “Vintage looks with none of the drawbacks associated with old watches; that’s one of the factors that makes vintage-inspired watches so attractive to watch enthusiasts.” Thank God I’m not a watch enthusiast. It’s like a Harley trike; it has all the advantages of being a motorcycle without actually being one. It’s all bad.

commentator bob

I have heard way to much about watches causing horse abuse. So here is a picture of Sarah Jessica Parker wearing a Cartier Tank. A horse causing watch abuse.

Agree but at least the bezel is not aluminum. PVD should wear as well on a bezel as it does on the body of a case, but I agree that at over 2K USD ceramic or sapphire should have been used for the bezel.

ILOW

A ceramic bezel would look stupid on a “heritage” piece like this. It does come with a bracelet option.

commentator bob

A full ceramic bezel could look a lot like the original Bakelite bezel. But a full ceramic bezel is warranted at this price.

Don’t like the hands nor the minute markers/lines. Don’t like the faux aged hour makers and whatever the gunk on the hands is. Come to think of it, I’m having a hard time finding much I do like on this watch.A leather strap option is perfect for the intended desk diving – so there is that. Even with a (more or less) 2892, the price seems too high.

HectorAsuipe

Did Trump put an import duty on rulers? The lugs are long. How long?
HOW effing LONG ARE THEY? CAN YOU GIVE US A LUG-TO-LUG LENGTH?
How about strap width? This is basic information that needs to be in every watch review, especially if there is extended conversation about the diameter and the long lugs.

babola

They’re “hiding” it as the lugs are indeed unnaturally long for a modern watch of that type. Had they stayed true to the original it would have been couple of MMs shorter.
Same issue on Longine’s Legend diver. It would have sold much better if the lugs weren’t that long.

Giveaway win today

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